The ability to monitor blood coagulation processes is important for effective hemostasis management, especially during surgeries and therapies such as hemodialysis.
Existing techniques that measure clotting time or assess the viscoelastic properties of blood often rely on highly trained personnel, use bulky and costly instruments, and only provide snapshots of the patient's blood condition at a specific time.
Schemes currently exist to monitor the concentration or activity of coagulation factors in blood via electrochemical, bioluminescence, and fluorescence techniques. These conventional approaches are often based on bulk-optics imaging systems that are very large and costly, and typically require at least 30 minutes for sample preparation and processing.
Examples include the following references. In US 2012/0252127, time-resolved coagulation and clotting properties are measured by imaging forward-scattered light. In U.S. Pat. No. 8,350,032, photoactive compounds designed to bind and inhibit serine proteases are considered. In U.S. Pat. No. 8,293,493, a method is provided for inferring generation of thrombin as a function of time calculated from fluorescence as a function of time.